Would Samuelson and Rutger come back to find out?
I flexed my shoulders, rolled my head from side to side. My muscles wouldn’t loosen.
An intense desire to hear Emily’s voice swept over me. I glanced at the clock. Past 1:00 a.m. Too late to call, despite what she’d told me. Besides, I couldn’t let her know how scared I felt. No need to frighten her more than she already was.
The sheriff’s surveillance car. Was it still outside?
In the darkened living room I edged back a curtain and looked down the street. The van I’d seen hours earlier was still there.
I wandered to the middle of the room and stood there, one hand to my neck. This couldn’t go on—I needed sleep. Another full workweek began just hours from now. Did I think I could do this night after night?
Dorothy. I’d have to tell Mom’s caretaker everything when she arrived. She’d need to be extra careful, on the lookout. I would give her Harcroft’s and Wade’s numbers.
Really, Hannah, you’re making too much out of this.
How was I supposed to work, worrying about Mom here at home?
A prayer flitted through my head—for the sheriff’s department to catch those two men soon. Then everything would be back to normal.
I found myself again in my room, staring with longing at my bed. The computer monitor scrolled through old pictures. I couldn’t find the energy to turn the thing off.
My feet took me toward the bed, then of their own accord veered to the desk. I picked up the gun. Carried it to the living room. Only my bedroom desk lamp remained on in the house. In the near dark, I pulled Mom’s blanket off her rocking chair. Laid my gun on the table beside the sofa. I lay down on the couch and covered myself with the blanket.
If anyone skulked through the front door, or the back, I’d hear them before they got to Mom’s room.
My eyes drifted shut, my brain fuzzing. The unstable world shifted . . . fell away . . .
In the last moment of consciousness I convinced myself we had nothing to worry about.
Chapter 9
The phone in his pocket buzzed. A high-tech device unknown to the masses, designed by the precise and skilled engineers of FreeNow, the organization he led. Calls untraceable. A mere chosen few had the number. Alex Weyerling, known as Stone by those in the FreeNow organization, pulled out the cell and checked the ID. It was Roz—“Agent Samuelson.”
Stone put the cell to his ear. “Yeah.”
“There’s an issue.”
He stiffened. “What now?” As if a traitor in their midst—on today of all days—wasn’t enough. And not just any traitor.
“The video. She gave us a copy.”
“How do you know?”
Roz told him.
Stone swore. “Why didn’t you get the truth out of her before you left her house?”
“You know why. She told us to leave.”
“She told you? The big guys with the guns?” Not to mention they were two of his men with badges. Stone had badges across the country—fake and real. “So you and Tex just crept out of there like mice?”
“You said not to blow our cover.”
“I also said not to come out of there without everything we needed!”
Silence.
Stone swore again. “Why, Roz? Just why do you think she would make the choice to keep it?”
“I don’t know.”
Stone punched the wall hard. There was only one reason. She knew something. “You told me she insisted Leringer didn’t tell her anything.”
“She did!”
“Guess what, Roz. She lied!”
“Yeah. Apparently. But we’re fixing it.”
“How fast, Roz? How fast?”
“Now. I’m going back. I’ll get her computer, any backup drives, whatever I can get. I’ll take care of it, Stone, I promise you.”
Stone rubbed his shaved head. His gaze drifted over the cluttered apartment. How he hated the place, surrounded by sounds of traffic and neighbors. His fellow Americans going about their futile business, so unaware of what their country had become. Of how the government had taken over every aspect of their lives. Just when their two-year plan was about to change it all, everything was going wrong.
“You listen to me, Roz, you’d better take care of this.” Stone slitted his eyes. “We’re running out of time. And don’t you leave that house again without finding out what that woman knows and who she’s told. Then take them both out.”
Roz hesitated. “One of ’em’s just an old lady. Doesn’t know half of what she says.”
Stone’s voice turned to steel. “Your point?”
“Nothing.”
Stone gripped the phone, his back hunched. Over a year of engineering. Planning timed to the second. All for the organization now to be at the mercy of a betrayer and a series of wild mistakes. First FreeNow’s computer security specialist, Eddington, had turned traitor at the last minute and rushed the crucial video to Morton Leringer. Then Nooley, sent to intercept Eddington and Leringer before it was too late, failed to get the video back. Now it was in the hands of some woman. And spreading further by the minute.